Setting The Record Straight
by filkertom
Summary: Rita Skeeter has published a tell-all book about Harry Potter. Harry, of course, won't let that go unanswered. Ignores Book 7 and Crapalogue.


Ummm. This is Harry Potter. God, I sound like a spy movie. Or maybe a marooned-in-space movie. "This is Harry Potter. Can anybody hear me?"

Anyway. This is just a little piece I'm dictating for the Quibbler. My friend Luna Lovegood offered me the chance to clear up a few things, after that misbegotten "unauthorized biography" Rita Skeeter cobbled out in a last, desperate attempt to reverse her sagging... fortunes. In fact, let's clear one thing up right away. She's an unlicensed Animagus. She can literally turn into a bug on the wall. So if anyone in the Ministry has got a No-Pest Strip they've been forgetting to hang, now's the time.

This really shouldn't take too long, actually - she got a surprising amount of stuff right. Just... the stuff she _did_ get wrong, she got _really _wrong.

For example: my entry into the Tri-Wizard Tournament of 1994-95. For the record, and this is known by the surviving judges of that esteemed event, I never, ever put my name into that competition. I didn't want "eternal glory". All I've ever really wanted was to be left alone. I never sought out any of the accolades and curses I've had flung at me, and honestly if Voldemort hadn't been such a murdering bastard with delusions of racial purity and magical empire we'd have probably got on well.

Another thing Rita has no clue about: she wrote that my parents were not well-liked. She got this from my Muggle aunt and uncle, who she interviewed for her book. Let's set that straight right now: My aunt, Petunia Evans, was insanely jealous of her sister, Lily, my mother, who got to go to Hogwarts because _she_ had magical ability and Aunt Petunia _didn't_. Petunia's husband, my uncle Vernon, thought my father James was a wastrel and a layabout, and thought all this magical stuff was nonsense practiced by freaks. (If he'd known how rich my father was, he'd have injured himself bending over backwards for him.) My aunt and uncle were the ones who didn't like my parents. And, from all reports I've got, they were the only ones, apart from the late Professor Severus Snape, who had a lifelong grudge with my father that he carried down to me. (I'm glad we resolved that before he died. Snape and I despised each other throughout school, but we came to respect each other - not in any way that I could call him a friend, but he was an ally, one forced to terrible acts. I can't forgive him for all of them, or even most of them... but I know why he did what he did, and at his passing we had declared truce. I'll come back to that.)

Yet another thing Rita got wrong was the "torrid love triangle" between me, my best friend Ron Weasley, and my other best friend (and now my wife) Hermione Granger. Not to mention the other two corners of the increasingly misnamed "triangle", Ron's sister Ginny and her husband Neville Longbottom.

Yes, Ron and Hermione were involved for about six months. Yes, Ginny and I were together for about two months. And then things changed. That happens. Obviously there's more to it than that, but... things change. People change. And what you thought was deeply meaningful at one time might turn out not to be at all, or vice-versa.

At the time, I was preoccupied with, you know, not being killed by Voldemort. And I was terrified for my friends, because I didn't want them hurt, but they wanted to help me, and I knew at my core I couldn't do it without them.

Hell, I wasn't sure I could do it _with_ them. But it had fallen to me, and so to us.

It was a very odd time. Even though we were only sixteen years of age, we felt at least five times that. We'd gone through so many amazing and terrible trials, more than anyone should have to go through in a whole lifetime. I mean, think of it: How many people did you know who'd been killed, mostly because of some association with you, by the time you were sixteen? I count at least five, including my godfather, my mentor, and my parents.

I'm surprised I didn't go mad.

The fact that I didn't is testimony to the love of my friends, who were determined to help me as much as they could. Ron and I had our set-tos back then, but when it came down to it, he was as loyal and steadfast as anyone could hope for, not to mention an excellent strategist. And Hermione... well, she kept us from dying stupidly, mostly through sheer force of will.

Our falling in love almost didn't happen for - okay, our admitting our love for each other and getting together almost didn't happen for a number of reasons. Because we couldn't stop ourselves from falling in love. She says she loved me at least from the moment I saved her from a troll in 1991, our first year at Hogwarts. I think I've loved her almost as long. It took a long time to realize what it was I was feeling, because - and I don't say this to garner sympathy, just to put it into perspective - I had a... hard childhood. And I really wasn't used to the idea of love, or being loved, or being in love.

And I didn't want to interfere with Ron and Hermione and their budding romance for a number of reasons, the most prominent of which was that I hoped they would have each other after I was dead.

Pretty fatalistic for a sixteen-year-old, don't you think? Although I bet, if you asked around, a lot of teenagers feel exactly the same way. "It'd be better for everyone if I was just not around anymore." That lovely dichotomy of feeling so unimportant that you won't be missed, and so important that your death would make everyone's life better.

So. My death would bring Ron and Hermione together.

Meanwhile, I had a brief but nice First Girlfriend thing with Ron's sister Ginny. Ginny was sweet, and pretty, and she'd been in love with me - well, in love with The Boy Who Lived - ever since she was a little girl. And, as I got to know her some in high school, she became more attractive to me. She loved Quidditch, and played well. Those reflexes, along with her loyalty and bravery, were put to the test in our fifth year, and, while I am not allowed for various reasons to go into detail about certain events of that time, suffice it to say that Ginny was superlative.

And, so, I thought I was in love.

The problem was that I wasn't close enough to her. There were too many things going on about my eventual showdown with Voldemort that I didn't feel comfortable about sharing with Ginny, for her own safety. And, when I told her I thought it best that we break up, she agreed. But later it felt to me like there'd been a test in there I hadn't planned; part of me really wanted her to stick with me, to say, "What the hell are you thinking? I love you, Harry Potter, and you're not getting rid of me that easily!"

She didn't do that.

She let me go.

And Ron and Hermione stayed.

So, now come a few of the juicy details you're all waiting for. Not merely about me and my friends and our "torrid love triangle", but about the downfall of Voldemort. How I did it.

We spent a lot of 1997 searching for the means to destroy Voldemort. Please note that I avoid the word "kill". And this is at the heart of a lot of it. It was going to come down to him or me, and I didn't want to be a killer any more than I wanted to be killed.

A deliberate death. A murder.

As mentioned, I was a boy, who wanted only to be left alone and not stand out in any way. To be a boy with a monumental destiny foisted upon him, expected to save the world by deliberately killing someone, and not just any someone but the most powerful wizard in a thousand years... whew.

So I wasn't thinking much about romance.

What I didn't know was that Ron was thinking about pretty much exactly what I was thinking about.

And he was, by default, as her boyfriend, spending more time with Hermione.

Hermione, who was worrying herself sick about me. Not merely about defeating Voldemort, but me personally. She doted on my every injury, worked herself into a panic if I was five minutes late. She studied round the clock, often forgetting to eat, poring through every magical tome she could get her hands on, trying to find that one little thing that might give me an advantage, an edge, a moment's extra life.

Hermione, who cried herself to sleep in Ron's arms, whispering my name.

I didn't know any of this was going on, and, looking back, I'm still amazed Ron didn't just punch my lights out. I know it must've burned a hole in him. Again, we were all sixteen. I think this would be difficult for anybody, any age.

And, after an explosive conversation between the three of us that I shall not relate the details of to my dying day, it became clear to us all that I was mad for Hermione, and hiding it to not hurt her or Ron, and she loved me desperately, and the only self-preservation she could bring to it in case I didn't survive Voldemort was to not actually become involved with me. She tried to pass it off as not wanting to distract me; plus, she had convinced herself that, by not _telling_ me she was in love with me, it was the same as not actually _being_ in love with me; and she did love Ron, so it was all right.

Ron and I convinced her at last that this was mental.

She then pointed out that I'd been doing the exact same thing.

It got really interesting after that.

Heh. I can't believe I'm going into all of this.

The gist of it was, Ron and Hermione were attracted to each other in a perfectly normal way, being young and healthy people friendly with each other in close proximity. But, if not for their friendship with me, they might never even have met. Ron was too much of a... well, a guy for Hermione's tastes, and she was too much of a scholar for his.

And Ron was the one who said that Hermione needed me possibly even more than I needed her.

And he left us alone.

I'll tell you this part, because I think it's sweet.

Hermione looked at me, and she was scared. Ron had, in effect, just dumped her, just handed her off like a prize to me. She hated that, or would have except that it was me. She probably hated it anyway.

But it _was_ me.

And it was her. And I was even more scared.

I didn't want to lose her. I didn't want to lose Ron.

And I wanted her so badly I didn't even have words for it.

"What now?" she whispered at last.

Her speaking broke my own trance. "I dunno. Hermione, I didn't - you two weren't supposed to break up..."

"_How do you know what we were supposed to do, Harry?_" Her sudden shriek startled us both. "You've been told some _bloody_ prophecies, and they immediately become immutable law! Well, _not to me!_" I started to say something, but she cut me off. "Everything in my entire life, _including_ magic, is about making things happen because you bloody well _want_ them to, not just letting them happen according to some prophecy or divine plan or _anything!_ That's _why_ Voldemort has got such power, Harry, because he had the will to do a thousand unspeakable things and _take_ it. But that's also how we're going to _beat_ him - because he's so caught up in the way he thinks things are _supposed_ to be, he's not paying attention to the way things _are!_"

"The way _what_ things are, Hermione?" I shouted. "What isn't the way it's supposed to be, huh?"

She paused for a moment, looking at me fearfully. "I'm supposed to love Ron," she said in a very small voice. "But I don't. I love you."

I think I stared at her, mouth open, for at least three full seconds before I bloody flew across the room and we held each other so tight that we had to back off a bit to actually kiss for the first time. And suddenly I wasn't a scared, unlovable boy trying to get used to the idea of dying alone. I was a young man, and the most remarkable young woman loved me, and I wanted to live.

The next few days can't have been easy for Ron, because Hermione and I couldn't keep our hands off each other. Not constant snogging or groping or anything like that, but having found our closeness once again and having it strengthened by mutual affection just pulled us toward each other. We touched almost constantly - a brush of fingertips on the back of a hand, hips bumping as we both reached for different books, a breath against the other's hair or neck, elbows rubbing together at the table. The contact made everything, especially each other, more real for us both.

Somehow, Ron dealt with it, and we dealt with him, and we all started meshing together again. Instead of growing further apart, we grew closer, all three of us, and oh my dear god did we want to live. We wanted to hand Voldemort his moldy undead arse, not because we hated him, not even because he deserved it, but because nobody should make anybody, let alone the whole world, that afraid of losing everything because somebody else is too bloody selfish.

Which is as good a place as any to bring up Severus Snape.

Besides having almost every detail about his life wrong, including the nonexistent "secret affair" with my mother that resulted in Snape being my true father, Rita has written herself into a corner again, by simultaneously excoriating Snape for murdering Albus Dumbledore and savaging me for hating Snape for no good reason. The truth is, I had a lot of good reasons, well before Dumbledore's death.

Snape was my potions professor at Hogwarts. And, from the day I arrived, he obviously hated me. I don't mean like a teacher who has to deal with an unruly student from the previous year – I mean, having never seen me before, he would've apparently been willing to do me great bodily harm because I dared to breathe in his presence. Everything I did was at best wrong and at worst pathetically, inevitably, deservedly wrong, and he took every opportunity to humiliate me in public. Naturally, I returned the sentiment, and we got along famously. That's probably the most accurate way to put that.

Snape was also a former Death Eater. He'd been an easy recruit for Voldemort; he was ungodly smart – the only person I ever knew as smart as Hermione. He was arrogant and secretive and obnoxious. And he killed Albus Dumbledore before my eyes.

I hated him for so many more things, it was almost superfluous to hate him for that.

But I found out later that, in fact, Albus had asked him to do so, to keep Snape's cover intact - Snape was a double agent, spying on Voldemort's inner circle for years - and to prevent one of my classmates from committing a murder.

There was a lot more between me and Snape. A lot more. And I really don't care to go into it here. Suffice it to say, after several years, a few horrible confrontations, and one duel that neither of us could believe I won, we came to a grudging - very grudging - respect for each other. And, when he died, from wounds taken in the Final Battle, with his last act he gripped my hand, one comrade to another.

Ahhh, the Final Battle.

We'd weakened Voldemort. But it still fell to me to deliver the fatal blow. And, left to himself, even weakened he was still more than powerful enough to conquer the world. So we attacked him, on our terms. There was a point past which our preparations would've been basically running in place, and when we got to that point we went to him, caught him by surprise, made him play defense, trapped him in his own lair. And it worked. There were fewer and less severe casualties than we'd feared, although we did lose many brave fighters and dear friends. But, by god, it worked.

Now, Rita's telling of the Final Battle is quite blown out of proportion, although surprisingly less than other things. Supposedly, Voldemort hit me with at least two dozen Avada Kedavras, which I withstood manfully until, bursting with the love of my darling Hermione, I returned his attack, a White Light of Purity that fried and shredded him where he stood. Actually, he _nearly_ hit me with _five_ AKs, one of which I blocked with a sword, three of which I dodged (and one of which unfortunately took the life of poor Colin Creevey, who was involved in another fight a number of yards away), and one of which did in fact strike me full on.

I had been told that I was the only person ever to survive that spell, when Voldemort cast it at me the night he killed my parents. I was not willing to rely on that. So we came up with a detailed battle plan for that day, and that moment was really the only failure of execution in the whole thing: Voldemort got the drop on me, plain and simple.

I don't think I can describe how it felt, except that... my entire body _buzzed_, very much in the way a spark briefly buzzes before it burns out, while my skin tried to burst at the seams. My life tried to flee my body in that moment, I think. But I - well, not exactly ignored it, but sucked it up and dealt with it. I can't explain any clearer than that. And, when I had done so, I felt recharged, renewed, the death in that spell added to my own life.

The only thing more satisfying than the look on his face when he realized I was still alive was BEING still alive.

From behind, Hermione shouted my name.

At which point, I did indeed return fire. And it _was _a brilliant white light, and it _did_ have my love for her in it, but also for my friend Ron, and for the rest of the Weasleys, and for my late godfather Sirius Black, and my slain parents, and Dumbledore, and Colin, and even Snape, and everyone else who had ever been hurt because Tom Marvolo Riddle had been terrified of the unknown.

It wasn't a spell as such; it was as if I was channelling all the magic in the area, all the magic in the world, and focusing it through everything swelling in my heart - the love and protectiveness I had for my friends, the anger at Voldemort for killing people just because he was a power-mad racist, the need to _end this_ once and for all. All of that, and more. And it did not destroy him cleanly. As I've said, Voldemort and I were magically bound in ways which still aren't entirely understood, and frequently we could feel each other's emotions, hear each other's thoughts. And, by opening myself entirely to magic, I was able to feel and hear Voldemort quite clearly. That white light did not mercifully blow him away, oh, no. No, it took him apart, one fear at a time, one lost or abandoned emotion at a time. It showed him his mortality; it showed him his hubris. It showed him revoking his own membership in humanity, and it showed him that that was the true seed of his defeat. Long before it stripped him of his flesh and his soul, it stripped him of his monstrous ego and left him with nothing but the emptiness of potential wasted.

Killing him at the end wasn't murder; it was mercy.

I really don't remember much of the next hour or so. I sank to my knees and cried like a child, and Hermione gathered me in her arms and held me. The battle continued around us, too big to be ended by the death of its instigator, and she held me until we were both cried out. Ron and a few others stood nearby, keeping watch over us, and I will always love him for that.

There was surprisingly little clean-up. The Death Eaters were never particularly organized - a huge violent gang, really, barely held together by Voldemort's charisma and personal power. His chief lieutenants, Lucius Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange, slew each other in a lethal clash of egos before the battle was even over. Most of the rest were captured. Our side lost many that day, but we'd expected to lose many more.

Things moved on. The ceremonies, the awards... the funerals. The Wizarding World, especially the Ministry, was determined to put on this huge foofaraw, and so many people's deaths were being scuffed under the rug because they might not present "the proper air of victory". They tried to make the ceremony where I got the Order of Merlin First Class a joyous event, which is why I stopped that in its tracks. You've all seen it. I meant every word. Those people didn't die so the Ministry could have a party. And I couldn't have done what I did alone.

Another thing. I've heard many, many people wonder why I didn't become an Auror, or join a Quidditch team, or something, and why Hermione hasn't become a schoolteacher or researcher or even an Auror herself. Well, besides the fact that the Auror division of the Ministry is... well, in the Ministry, and they're really not very happy with me right now, the truth is, I'm well off. My parents were rich, and I, and Hermione, and our children's children's children will never have to work a day in our lives. We're damn fortunate.

Not to say that we don't keep busy. I'm learning - and, to my surprise and delight, creating - new magic all the time, and Hogwarts has made a generous offer for the position of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher that I'm considering. Hermione, free to concentrate on her interests without the onerous burden of the next paycheck, has been prominent in house-elf rights, and has written a book on runes and one on charms that are rapidly becoming standard texts in those fields.

And she's going to be having our first child in about five months. So there's a scoop for you, Luna.

In any case, the point is that I've already saved the world once, and, while I don't think I'm slacking off, I do think I've earned a rest and a bit of privacy. And the only real reason I've given my point of view here is that Rita Skeeter should not be allowed the last word on anything, because it'll invariably be wrong.

So, please understand if I'm not a very public person. I never asked to be The Boy Who Lived.

But I'm really enjoying being The Man Who's Living.


End file.
